The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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In
his letter to the King, Attlee said “… Mr. Churchill gave it as his own
opinion that it was most
important to keep India in the Commonwealth. While
fully agreeing with the importance of not weakening
the link of the allegiance to
the Crown, he thought that it should be possible to retain a republican
India in the
Commonwealth.”3

Thus,
the Conservative Administration, and once again Churchill as Prime
Minister, pressed ahead with plans for
self-government in the colonies, that had
already been started by the previous Labour government. As
Oliver Lyttleton,
who was the Colonial Secretary from 1951 to 1954, has put it: “…it seemed
clear
that the development of self-government…was at once the only enlightened and
the only
practical theme of a colonial policy in the fifties.”4 Hence,
decolonisation
under the successive Conservative Governments continued on steadily. When
Harold
Macmillan was in office from 1957 to 1963, he appointed Iain Macleod
as the Colonial Secretary. Macmillan
was in effect issuing a directive to quicken
the pace of British withdrawal from the colonies in Africa
and in other areas.
Macloed commented later:

“It has been said that after I became Colonial Secretary there was a
deliberate speeding up of
the movement towards independence. I agree
there was. And in my view any other policy would have led to
terrible
bloodshed in Africa. This is the heart of the argument.

Were
the countries fully ready for independence? Of course not. Nor was
India, and the bloodshed which
followed the grant of independence there
was incomparably worse than anything that has happened since to
any
country. Yet the decision of the Attlee Government was the only realistic
one. Equally we could
not possibly have held by force to our territories in
Africa. We could not, with an enormous force
engaged, even continue to
hold the small island of Cyprus. General de Gaulle could not
contain
Algeria. The march of men towards freedom can be guided, but not halted.

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